


Redemption by Love

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon - Engaging gap-filler, Canon - Enhances original, Canon - Outstanding AU/reinterpretation, Characters - Good use of minor character(s), Characters - New interpretation, Characters - Strongly in character, Characters - Well-handled emotions, Plot - Can't stop reading, Plot - Good pacing, Pre-Years of the Trees, Romance, Writing - Engaging style, Writing - Well-handled PoV(s), Writing - Well-handled dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4221484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strange love story of Osse and Uinen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption by Love

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

Author's note:

I was forced to go for the most conservative Catholic super Tolkien-proper  
attitude to sex ever. It'll haunt me forever and I'm really sorry.

Endless thanks to Nemis for both the beta-reading and title!

 

 

The dark was upon the great, shining spirit as a storm cloud, like a shroud  
of dank breath, tangible, terrible, fiery, heavy. Nothing at all like the  
pure ocean's depth, nothing at all like the cool, soothing wind and the  
sparkle of light upon water and the bite of salt. Round it lay, choking all  
that stood under its assault, and the voice came from it booming and  
echoing as it emerged, banging on the walls of the world. Before it the  
small naked spirit felt insignificant, lost to the darkness, lost in the  
storm.

It sought to engulf him, sought to choke from him the life and hope, and he  
had to let it. All his courage he gathered into speaking to it, all the  
wildness of his soul, all his petty strength. He shouted to it the words,  
torn from him by the swirling dark cloud, finding comfort in them and  
strength for another instant more.

"Would you let me love her?"

A roar came from the cloud, echoing in the spaceless, timeless void, the  
void of outside the world, beyond the borders of Ea, beyond the dome of the  
stars. The cloud of rage and death and hatred filled it all, out and beyond  
his sight and that of those greater than him. Lightning seemed to crackle  
within it, blazing light, dire winds. It swept at his formless essence as  
the strike of a mortal weapon, it buried him under it, and it laughed.

"Have you come to me for the freedom to love, little Maia?"

Formless, bodiless, still he shivered before the words, but let not his  
terror show. Before the greatest of creation he was standing, all save the  
One himself, and he would not bow down. In the cloud, the cloud that  
encompassed all that was, all that is, all that will be, lay the promise of  
freedom indeed, a different freedom than all was promised him.

"For the freedom to love as I please, lord Melkor, world-master!"

At once the cloud was upon him, terrible and great. If he had worn bodily  
form. for a moment, he savored what new feelings he might have found, what  
new freedom. But he stayed his mind and he steeled himself, knowing that  
the struggle was useless, knowing his every thought lay open before the  
cloud, before the dark. Every strange emotion and forbidden desire, and he  
made no effort to hide them. Indeed, who else would understand? Who else  
would see and approve?

He waited while the cloud devoured him. Letting it plunge through his  
spirit was like being cut apart slowly, limb by limb, in bodily form. What  
secrets did he reveal other than the one that had darkened his very  
existence, he did not know, and tried not to guess. What horrors he had  
unleashed upon the world in letting that invasion take place he could not  
even imagine.

And the cloud moved closer to the part of him that he shut out, the memory  
of bodily form, the memory of pleasure and pain. Then it laughed once more,  
and it dived in, and it felt all he felt and knew all he knew. Now the  
feeling coursed through him again, painful, dark, tainted.

His disembodied spirit cried out in memory of the staining of the body, but  
the void remained cold and unknowing. He was lost within the cloud, and he  
dared not even feel the fear.

Then Melkor's storming form closed upon him like an embrace.

"'Tis freedom you desire then, Osse of the Maiar," he whispered to him in  
the darkness. "Would you serve me?"

He closed tighter upon Osse's powerless form, banishing the cold and  
emptiness of the void somehow. The tormented Maia wished for bodily eyes  
and bodily tears, and then he bowed his head.

"In all things, my lord," he said, "save the matters of the heart."

Melkor laughed, and the echo rang all over the void.

***********************

The world was not yet fully formed, and already there were storms.

For days upon days, weeks upon weeks that could not be counted, the sea  
rose upon the earth to devour it. The kindly, benign wind soothing Arda's  
wounds was made cold terror and dire strike and bashed the waves under its  
unending blows. Swirling winds drew pillars of water up into the heavens,  
and lightning struck down to the surface, lovely blue turned frozen black.  
The air was so cold it seemed to become ice.

And the waves rose like hungry beasts, like great birds of prey to bite and  
gnaw at the shores, tearing bits of land into their bottomless bellies.  
Shells and sea-creatures were thrown to the sand, sea-birds cast in the  
unforgiving wind. The tops of the highest of trees stood brave before the  
onslaught, but swiftly gave in small forests and low hills. When the waves  
eased, the rain began to come down, endless, cold. Then hail and snow,  
puncturing the land's tortured flesh. Thunder rolled from the west, and the  
flashes of lighting were no light.

The sea went to war on the earth, and Osse commanded his armies, shielding  
his eyes against the terrible lightning and weeping for horror and ecstasy  
into the rain.

"Come to me!" He screamed with all the power of his bodily form into the  
rage of the storming sky, words the likes of which were never heard before  
in all of Ea. "Come to me, Uinen the lady of the waves! Come to me, fairest  
and sweetest of the Ainur!"

***********************

Far in the blessed west dwelt the Valar and Maiar, and the storms could not  
touch them. There on golden beaches sat Uinen the lady of the waves in  
bodily form, and she heard Osse's cries.

Thus she bent close to the rippling water near the shore, and her blue and  
green hair touched them gently, and slowly she melted into them, becoming  
as one with the seas. Closer her soft lips came to the water, to sent a  
quiet message in reply to dire fury, but she was struck frozen and fearful  
with the might of a greater spirit, coming upon her as a shadow.

"Do not heed him, ocean-daughter."

Up rose Uinen's deep, dark eyes. "He calls for me, Lady."

"He is with the Dark One now."

A hush fell upon the ocean-daughter, and shortly her bodily form oozed and  
trembled, water calling to water. Wind came from the east, bearing upon it  
cold rage, fiery yearning.

"Would you go to him, pure Uinen?"

She was not pure, but she had not the heart nor courage to say it.

"I would not," she whispered in her bodily voice, tender as the sound of  
running water. "Forgive me, my Lady."

Warmth touched her as the greater presence departed, but powerless warmth  
that did not comfort. For who could forgive her at all?

***********************

Water calling to water, the memory of sweet lips reaching for water; a  
snatched, distant image upon the rising wind.

Osse cursed his bodily form, which heated and raged and longed, and yearned  
for her madly, feeling in the water and wind her taste and smell and touch.

Long was he now past shock, past denial and embarrassment, long past all  
thoughts of his spirit-form, the beautiful pureness of the world without  
the burdens of flesh. The whole of him was naught but need, the impossible,  
terrible need, for which he would destroy the world entire.

So he called upon all his fury and despair and frustration and poured it  
upon the land, and the wind took away his voice as he screamed her name  
till he could no longer speak. Down he called rain and snow and thunder and  
lightning, and cursed the forces of the world, which took something as  
strange and marvelous as light of stars and turned it into a storm to  
devour him and existence both.

And not once did he stop thinking of the freedom he was promised, and  
thinking that if Melkor could understand what he had found he felt, surely  
his claim to the world was just.

***********************

Uinen's bodily form called for attention, exhaustion, cold and hunger  
claiming their toll. She did not know how long she did not move from the  
water. In the distance she could see the clouds and hear Osse's voice,  
screaming, begging.

His bodily voice, which she remembered so very well.

One moment she almost let slip her guard, sinking into joyful, terrifying  
memories, but quickly shook her head, blue and green hair waving, and  
resumed the frozen front, her only defense.

"Uinen ocean-daughter?"

A bodily voice - so rare in the realm of the Valar that it made her jump,  
and fearfully she turned to look with her eyes upon its source. There  
before her stood Aule the Vala, in bodily form. An expression not strange  
to her, a fond smile, played upon the smith's face, and he settled by her  
upon the shore and hesitantly touched the water.

"That is your name, is it not?" he asked, and she nodded but slightly. "The  
name he cries."

Sadly, Uinen smiled. "I had not thought any but me heard, Lord."

"All do," he said with honesty. "Yet none understands."

She gave silence and reply, and Aule spoke more once. "Why does he call  
you, ocean-daughter?"

Uinen's fingers, odd, lovely things, played in the shallow water. Never  
before had any of the Valar come to her in bodily form. In the distance,  
Osse's voice was breaking in despair.

"I." she choked a moment. "I cannot tell, my Lord."

Aule nodded slowly, and in a careless matter he added. "A shame, for it may  
be that we would be forced to take action against him if this continues."

Cold wind engulfed Uinen and she leaped to her feet, crying out in alarm.  
Take action! Why, that was saying that they may have to imprison him,  
banish him, maybe. Spirit and bodily form both!

"No, Lord, please do not!" she cried, feeling the ocean invading her eyes.  
"We did not know."

"Did not know what, Uinen?" the Vala's eyes retained something of his  
spirit form in them, something that shone forth now from his flesh, face  
and voice. She sunk to the ground before him, covering her eyes and  
thrusting hands into her hair.

"We were here on this shore." she wept, "in bodily form, us two. There are  
feelings in bodily form, my Lord, and needs that we did not know. and Osse  
said that there is joy to be found, in bodily form, in. bodily love."

Aule's radiant eyes grew wide. "Did he force you, ocean-daughter."

One moment, Uinen found herself wondering how easy it would be to say that  
he did.

"No," she said at last, "no, he did not. I loved him willingly. I love him  
still, my Lord," she bowed her head. "Bodily."

***********************

Time passed, how much he did not know, and Osse could rage no longer  
between the sea and clouds. Powerless and tried beyond measure, at last he  
stayed his storms, and fell to the water, the comforting water. The bodily  
form he wore for long felt heavy and wasting, he longed for the freedom of  
the sea, the freedom of the spirit.

But that was not the freedom that he sought.

So by sheer force of will he held together his flesh and lay upon the sand,  
his eyes, gray as the clouds, scanning the sky. Still dark they were, and  
rain was still pouring down. The rain made it harder to retain the body he  
wore. Every drop seemed to steal something of him or melt into him, luring  
him back into his water, his proper state of existence.

He cursed propriety and lay still, basking in the constant, dim pain  
pulsing through his muscles, for long hours, till his world went dark.

And when he woke, he was not alone on the seashore.

Her skin was soft and her breath was sweet and quiet. Her flesh radiated  
warmth. The face she wore was perfect, the green blue hair long and smooth,  
the lips full, lush, alive. Her body was more perfect still. It curved  
sleekly under the barest of sea-shaded garments. She slept by his side,  
innocent, unmoving, flawless.

Osse did not know whether she enjoyed tormenting him so. His own body was  
reacting wildly to hers, and he hated and loved it with a passion that  
brought the clouds back to the sky.

"Uinen," he whispered, and ran a hand through her hair, over her back, down  
her long legs.

She shuddered under his touch and shifted, and carefully he drew away,  
terrified of waking her, but her eyes fluttered open nonetheless. She gazed  
upon him and tears gathered in them like rain.

"I love you, Osse, and I cannot stop," she wept into the sand.

"Then do not," he kept stroking her, softly, ever so softly. She felt the  
answer of her body to his touch, so strange, so beautiful. "The master I  
now serve cares not how we love, ocean-daughter. Come bring with me the  
greatest storm this world has ever seen!"

"That I cannot do either, my Osse, my brave love." Uinen whispered in  
reply. Slowly, her hand found his. A simple touch - how could it be greater  
than the world? "Such danger is in this passion. how right were the Valar  
to condemn it!"

"Nothing right can condemn this." the scent of her skin, the texture, the  
warmth, he had never witnessed anything so marvelous, more marvelous than  
the entire of creation with all its endless glory. A simple touch.

"No," she said, "nothing right can."

She took his hand and slowly they rose to their feet. For a moment, they  
merely stood upon the shore, paying no mind to the sea and sky. Then they  
both reached for each other, lips claiming lips, fearful, inexperienced  
hands working down shivering bodies. Bodily love - a simple touch, no more,  
and from there the storm would conquer the world entire.

The storm grew and intensified, roared and shrieked, but it could not hold  
back the two lovers nor make them let go. Rain came and lightning and cold  
wind and bitter hale, but the world stood helpless, before bodily love, as  
if, they dared imagine, as if it was true love after all.

Long they stood locked in the embrace, while the wind howled, and the rain  
poured, and the sky raged.

***********************

Round in the Ring of Doom gathered the forces of the world, and discussed  
love.

Long they discussed it soundlessly, in spirit-form and thought, while upon  
Arda the storm raged on, defiant of their outrage. Long they discussed laws  
and destiny, and flesh and blood, right and wrong and love.

And thought it could not and did not touch them, the storm raged. And in  
every drop of rain, every flake of snow, every gust of wind there was  
passion, and memory of passion, and wild, forbidden delight in passion.

There was the warmth of intimacy, and the flame of desire, and the  
tenderness of sharing, and gnawing need. Love was there that the world did  
not know, and love the gods themselves never imagined.

And ignorant of it all, the Valar discussed love, pondered, feared and  
condemned love. For who was to know in truth what ruin love could bring  
upon Arda? No knowledge they needed of it other than the terrible and  
beautiful destruction of the storm, other than the despair in distant  
voices. Nothing else they knew of it than that it swept one of their number  
away into darkness, and that the darkness must be stopped, be the cost what  
it must.

All of that they knew, and spoke forth, and agreed upon to be dooms for the  
world entire.

Then as they were prepared to abandon their council and put to practice  
those new laws on which they have decided, the rain broke the circle and  
Osse and Uinen appeared therein.

Long they stood before the Valar, bound yet within their bodily forms. The  
wind swept at their flowing hair, fiery red mingling with green-blue.  
Lightning reflected in their bright eyes, and their hands were held  
together. The rain washed down the painfully tender surface of their flesh,  
bare of any garments.

Pathetically small and vulnerable, naked, motionless and silent, they stood  
there, and neither of them bowed their heads.

And ere long, a voice rang out and drowned the thunder.

"Thou dare appear so before the might of the Valar?"

Uinen's hand, soft and warm, pressed Osse's gently. He raised his head,  
throwing back his long hair, bodily eyes staring up at the spirit-  
nothingness.

"Let the Valar deal us just punishment if pride in those forms of ours be a  
crime!"

Anger rose like the heat of fire from the gathered Ring, swelling anger  
threatening to pour forth upon the two. But up rose the Voice of the Sky  
and silenced it.

"Once wrong thou have done in thy union, ocean-daughter and stormbringer,  
and twice wrong if that be the manner of thy love."

To this, Uinen replied, and the crashing of the waves was in her gentle  
bodily voice.

"Does our love come of the One, or of the Enemy?"

More rage rose in the Ring, a new storm, darker, stronger storm, striking  
against not the land but the very world.

"All love of the One is come."

No answer did the two Maiar give at first, not for long as the storm rose  
and subsided, unwilling to erupt, unable to be calmed. Two paths were open  
ahead of them, and down one was fire and rage and storm to no end - and now  
Osse found that he no longer feared nor hated that way.

Yet there was another, Uinen's way, the way of his beloved.

Thus he looked at her with questioning eyes, silent as a calm lake. And she  
smiled at him, and her gentle fingers stroked his skin, and she spoke in a  
faint voice none but he could hear.

"Yes," she whispered.

He felt his heart swell for joy within him as the rising tide, and raising  
his head once more he cried for Ring and storm to hear: "then upon Eru  
Iluvatar we call to bless our union, while Arda endures!"

The thunder broke, and in the thunder was an answer.

***********************

Then in the halls of the Valar beyond the mortal lands were wed Osse  
stormbringer and Uinen ocean-daughter, first of all those who dwell in  
Arda. There the Ainur have gathered round to bless them with joy and left  
Melkor to rage at the flight of his servant in the cold lands beyond. There  
Osse swore his allegiance anew to Ulmo the Lord of the Seas, and his rage  
was forgiven him, and Uinen was forgiven for her seeking him out. There  
they have received as a gift upon their union the untamed winds giving rise  
glory of storms, as a testament and memory to passion, destructive and  
beautiful.

It is said that their union lasts to this day, through the many ages, a  
love of the flesh as immortal as the spirit. Not forgotten was their  
transgression, first among the dwellers in Arda to know bodily love, and  
some say it was not welcome either. Yet love is love, and all love of the  
One is come - and who among great and small both may say ought else?

~~ End ~~

 

 

A couple notes on the characters and pairing:

First, concerning love and marriage among the Ainur: it should be noted  
that the Valarin couples we know, such as Manwe and Varda, are not really  
married. Rather they were created together, as a couple. If I understood my  
Sil. correctly, the first couple that is actually married are Osse and  
Uinen. I may be mistaken about this, though.

Of all the Ainur, it always seemed most likely to me that if anyone would  
discover, ehm, the joys of the flesh, it would be impulsive, emotional  
Osse. That part of the story I completely made up. However, it does state  
in the Valaquenta that Osse served Melkor for a time and was brought back  
to the side of 'right' by Uinen. I just came up with a different reason for  
it all.

Finally, on appearances - sorry, can't help but imagine Osse as a redhead.  
Uinen's hair is canonically green.


End file.
